Elections

Timing Of Poll Keeps Rand Paul Off Debate Stage

Alex Pfeiffer White House Correspondent
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A Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll released Wednesday Morning has Sen. [crscore]Rand Paul[/crscore] in fifth place in Iowa. If the poll, which was completed Sunday, had been released on Monday instead of Wednesday, Paul would have qualified for Thursday’s Fox Business debate.

The Kentucky senator has declined to participate in the undercard debate and plans to petition Fox Business to count the new poll, though Fox Business spokesperson Caley Cronin told Politico, “We announced the criteria in December and clearly stated the polling needed to be conducted and released by Monday, January 11th at 6pm/ET.”

The top six candidates in the most recent five national polls as of Monday and the other candidates in the top five in either Iowa or New Hampshire would be invited on the main stage, according to Fox Business’ criteria.

Appearing on MSNBC Wednesday morning, Paul denounced the methods of debate inclusion.

“Even last week, your poll had me in the top five as well in Iowa,” he said. “There’s a lot of evidence that there’s motion in the polls up and down. It is a mistake when people are close within the margin of error to exclude people, we have a national campaign. Last week I was in Iowa announcing a thousand precinct chairs. It isn’t fair to exclude some people from the debate.”

“We just can’t accept artificial designation that tells supporters or voters in Iowa that we’re not in the first tier,” he said. “Everything indicates we ought to be in the first tier.”